4 ms·
A lot of 'shock' is taking something considered some form of 'sacred' (like sex, religion, etc) and making a mockery of that 'sacred' thing or way of thinking.
by TheSisb2 12y ago
A lot of 'shock' is taking something considered some form of 'sacred' (like sex, religion, etc) and making a mockery of that 'sacred' thing or way of thinking.
As jerf said, people are kind of used to shock-jockeys nowadays by being aware of that repetitive pattern, but there is still that potential laying all over the place. If nothing is deemed 'sacred', are we better off?
- theorique 12y agoThere's a lot of heterogeneity in what people consider sacred nowadays, and probably less illusion of a shared consensus. For example, the "shocking" comics in Charlie Hebdo are genuinely religiously offensive in the Moslem world, intellectually offensive to some liberals in the West who think that the comics are rude to a religious minority, and not offensive to a great many secular or otherwise non-Moslem people. Similarly, art in the West that would have shocked as recently as the 1950s is now greeted with an eye roll and "this again? Probably just a stunt." Furthermore, the chance to take offense and be a moral scold seems to have become equal opportunity - as concepts like feminism and multiculturalism gained influence over the past few decades, being offensive to left-wing taboos is increasingly "shocking". Whereas previously, a person might be tried for "obscenity" (against morality or Christianity or public order), now he might be tried for "human rights offenses" or "cultural insensitivity".